Is a Women’s Football Team Being Persecuted for Lesbianism?

• Malavan Football Club management ordered the dissolution of the team on financial grounds. 

• Team members and coaches disputed the reason, citing discrimination and the men’s team being awarded a budget disproportionate to its performance.

• The management issued another statement, saying the reason the team was dissolved could not be divulged because it would go against Islamic values.

• Two team members have been accused of homosexuality, a serious crime in Iran.

• The accusation could be a tactic to justify discrimination against the women’s team.
  
   

A women’s football team in Iran has been dissolved after some of its players were accused of lesbianism. The team, which had  been a member of the Iranian Women’s Football League for the last eight years, came second out of 10 teams in 2015’s league tournament. 

The news follows reports that women athletes face high levels of discrimination in Iran. Not only do they not receive the financial support enjoyed by male athletes, they are ignored by state media and often go without their agreed pay for months. Some female athletes taking part in the Rio Olympics were not allowed to bring their coaches with them to the Games. 

Now Malavan Football Club’s women’s team has been told it can no longer play. The team was affiliated with Mazandaran Provincial Government and the Iranian Navy. (“Malavan” means “Sailor” in Persian.)

In June, Malavan’s officials announced they were thinking about dropping the women’s team because of financial difficulties. The news was met with negative reactions from some of the players. “Club’s officials never gave [the team] financial support,” said Sara Qomi, an Iranian female footballer who now plays for Iraq’s Football League. “They did not even congratulate them for their victories.”

Not long after Qomi’s statements, Masoud Rezaian, managing director of Malavan, announced the club’s decision to stop sponsoring the team — even though that sponsorship primarily meant it allowed the team to use its grounds and its name.

Afsaneh Eghbal, who also used to play for Malavan and now plays for the Iraqi league, told IranWire that officials were lying when they cited financial difficulties. She also had sharp words to say about the discrimination the team faced, and said the budget allocated to Malavan’s men’s team was out of proportion with the team’s performance. Malavan’s men’s team had fallen in Iran’s league’s rankings, whereas the women’s team had come in second.

“When a ship is caught in storm it throws its excess weight overboard,” Masoud Rezaian told a sports news website about the closure of the club’s female team. Needless to say, his metaphor was not well received, especially by the players or their coaches, some of whom mocked Rezaian. “We have seen in the movies that when a ship is sinking, they first put women and children in the lifeboats,” said Maryam Irandoost, the head coach of Malavan women’s team. In addition to playing for Iran’s National Women’s Football Team, Irandoost was for years a member of the Iranian Women’s Boating Team.

Writing on Instagram, Samira Rostami, goalkeeper for the Malavan Women’s Team and a member of Iran’s National Women’s Football team, said: “They drank their hot tea and then with cold hearts made their most heartless managerial decision.”

Homosexuality and Dishonor

Criticisms became so fierce and widespread that Malavan Club decided it needed to respond again. “In an Islamic society we cannot name the reason for dissolving the Malavan Women’s Team,” the club announced in a statement. It added that the reason could not be stated “explicitly in the media.” Understandably, far from settling the matter, the comments fueled further curiosity and led to speculations in the media. Eventually, a few people tweeted that the reason for the demise of the team was that two of its members were homosexuals.

Under Iranian law, homosexuality is a crime, and being charged with homosexual activities can have serious consequences.

IranWire contacted the team’s head coach to ask her about the allegations. Her answers were short and to the point. “We have hired a lawyer and we have filed a complaint,” she said. “It is better not to say anything at the moment so that the gentlemen cannot take undue advantage of it.” She ended our conversation by stating: “This allegation is a pure lie.”

We also spoke to two members of the team who asked to remain anonymous. “They are dishonoring us and our families,” they said, highlighting the taboo nature of homosexuality in Iran despite efforts of Iranian LGBT activists. The two said they were worried about the consequences of being disgraced in a religious society that continues to show intolerance toward the LGBT community.

“Sara” is a women’s sports reporter. She has lived and worked with Iranian sportswomen for more than a decade and says she knows them well, sensing a different culture in each unique sport. “Football is a different story from other sports,” she told IranWire. “Track and field female athletes always coordinate their nail polish. Woman basketball players and shooters like to have the same makeup when they enter the competitions. The same goes for girls in karate and Taekwondo. But it is not like that in football.” 

She did not give a reason for her generalization about the athlete’s concern with appearance, which seemed at odds with other accounts Iranian sportswomen themselves have given. Take Zahra Nemati, Iran’s Taekwondo champion, who carried the Iranian flag at the Rio Olympics opening ceremony, or shooter Elaheh Ahmadi.

For them, their sport is about hard work and ambition — and often about making their families and their country proud. “I don’t care about fashion or luxury,” Ahmadi has said. Their vantage point rejects some of the stereotypical perspectives Sara seems to be calling on, a tendency that suggests a clear reason why the fate of the Malavan women’s team has been reduced to speculations about their sexuality. 

But Sara does not dismiss the possibility that there are lesbians in Malavan’s team. “I am not saying that it is just a rumor and I am not saying that it is a fact. But my question is this: You disband the whole team for this? If they have problems with a few of them, they can dismiss them but keep the team. We know very well that there are homosexuals among sportsmen as well.”

In 2011, the newspaper Iran published a special feature entitled “Clean Football.” In it, Ebrahim Afshar, a distinguished sports journalist wrote that a 1980s male Iranian football star had engaged in homosexual relations with two other footballers. Before it could be printed and distributed, however, Ali Akbar Javanfekr, the paper’s editor-in-chief, censored the article, removing it from the newspaper’s special issue. At the time, only the editorial staff know about the scandal.

The lawyer representing Malavan Women’s Football Team’s will pursue the matter of the new scandal, taking it through Iran’s  legal system. At the moment, it is not clear what the accusations are exactly, or at whom they are directed — and whether other agendas are at play.